


Distance Does Not Make You Falter

by cricket_aria



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: College Student Peter Parker, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Tony Lives While Still Being Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-02 17:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21165053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria
Summary: MIT was out of the question after Beck's announcement; other heroes rallying behind him had only barely managed to convince the rest of the world that it was all a lie, and if Spider-Man suddenly moved to Cambridge at the same time Peter Parker went to school there it would all be for nothing.Still, he couldn't shake the guilt over taking a different path than the one Tony had wanted for him.





	Distance Does Not Make You Falter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/gifts).

Three years into his time at Rensselaer and Peter still couldn’t completely shake the guilt when he remembered the full-ride scholarship to MIT he’d had to turn down, the only thing Mr. Stark had left him that he’d outright rejected, but Beck had ensured that college in Cambridge was impossible for him. It had taken Fury’s people and the remains of the Avengers a lot of work to convince the world that, no, Spider-Man was not a teen-aged boy no matter what the TV said. Even then the suspicion had only really seemed to die down when Adrian Toomes had gone on record as knowing for a fact that Beck’s video had been a lie, because he’d been watching Peter Parker and his daughter working on homework together at the same time that his men had been fighting Spider-Man.

It was a little sad that people were more willing to believe a villain than their own superheroes, but Toomes’ life had been destroyed by Spider-Man. No one would ever believe that he’d lie to protect him.

All that work would have been thrown straight out the window again if Peter Parker moved to Massachusetts and that suddenly became Spidey’s new stomping grounds too. It wouldn’t be believable as just a coincidence, and, though he felt a little embarrassed that he couldn’t be as brave as Mr. Stark and let everyone know the truth, he knew that if he did everyone he cared about would be in danger. Even some people he didn’t; Toomes would probably have been outright shanked for his lie.

So in the end he’d had a choice between two options: going to school somewhere in New York that would feasibly be within Spider-Man’s patrolling range, or going to school overseas and embracing his third identity as Night Monkey until graduation. And, tempting through RWTH Aachen might be and happy though Fury would be not to have to grab him and stuff him into a black suit whenever Europe needed a hero, Peter wasn’t about to pretend that his German was up to snuff.

Ms Potts (still Ms Potts to him, even though he had tried to ignore the way it stung and call her Mrs. Stark; she’d just given him a small sad smile and told him it was okay to stick with what he was used to, she’d kept her maiden name for business purposes anyway) had offered to still provide him with his scholarship, but he’d asked her to save it for Morgan instead. Mr. Stark had left him that money, had never taken it out of his will even after five years of thinking Peter was gone for good just in case, wanting him to follow in his footsteps. Peter wouldn’t accept it if he couldn’t live up to that. He’d been prepared to scrounge for scholarship money back before Mr. Stark had swooped into his life like his own private fairy godmother and made him believe he could dream as big as he wanted and have it work out. He still had the grades and even the extracurriculars to manage it.

At least that’s what he told himself. Though he suspected that if he traced all the financial aid he’d managed to arrange back to their sources he’d find Stark Industries behind a lot of it. So he didn’t. He kept his eyes away from the details about the organizations behind the organizations behind the various awards and grants he’d been given so he couldn’t know for sure whether Ms Potts had arranged things to sneak Mr. Stark’s gift to him in a way he’d never meant. He still wanted, _so much_, to be whatever Mr. Stark wanted him to be, he didn’t want to take his money to become anything else.

(Enough time had passed that sometimes he could distance himself enough to remember that what Mr. Stark had wanted Peter to be most of all was different from him. Better, even though that still felt impossible. So maybe he would have been happy to see Peter taking a different path than the one mimicking his own past that he’d thrown down at his feet. Maybe he’d have tagged along on orientation weekend wearing sunglasses and a hoodie like they actually counted as a disguise, making endless cutting comments to Peter about how the school compared to his own Alma Mater, but then looked at him with that warm, proud, expression that had always made Peter’s heart crawl up into his throat and choke him.)

(He wished he could know for sure. Even if his insecurities were the part of him in the right and Mr. Stark did hate him going anywhere but MIT he wished he could know for sure. He’d gladly take Mr. Stark looking just as disappointed with him as he had after the ferry incident, if it meant he got even five more minutes of time with him to tell him how his life had been going and find out what he thought.)

Three years since starting school, even longer since Mr. Stark had died, and the guilt never completely went away. He didn’t think it could, until enough time had passed that he stopped missing Mr. Stark all the time. And, even though it hurt, he didn’t actually want that to happen. Not if it meant everything he thought and felt about the man had to start growing distant.

The one thing he never expected, outside of a possibly unhealthly number of daydreams about all the things he’d want to do if he ever had a chance to see Mr. Stark one more time, was that it wouldn’t need to.

* * *

Afterwards he’d feel like he should have known what was coming. Maybe not the exact truth—he would have written it off as his millionth bout of wishful thinking even if he had—but that something really good was coming his way. He had a feeling for when bad things were happening, why couldn’t he get one giving him a heads up about good things? That would seem more appropriate to call a tingle anyway.

Instead he was just pleasantly surprised to see Happy hanging around beside a car outside his apartment. A little wary when he noticed the way Happy was nervously fidgeting, hoping for all that he liked the man that he wasn’t about to find out he was getting a new uncle, but mostly really just glad to see him. “Hey Happy,” he greeted him with a grin, “is the world ending, or were you just nearby and figured you’d say hi?”

If anything Happy looked even more nervous, and Peter started worrying that maybe he really had been sent to collect him because of some new danger. He hadn’t been ghosting _anyone_ lately for them to think they had to catch him by surprise and shove him into a car to get him to go to work, and even if they did there had to be people available who’d be better at trying to push him around than Happy, but this didn’t look like ‘I’m proposing to your aunt’ nervousness. Though underneath it there was also… excitement? “Um. Is everything okay?” he asked, when a long moment passed and Happy had only managed to open and close his mouth a few times without actually saying anything.

“Peter, you’ve gotta believe me that I _didn’t_ know,” he finally said. “I don’t care what they thought, I would have told you if I’d known. That day on the plane, no way would I have been able to hold it in.”

Peter frowned as he stepped closer. Later he liked to think maybe he started to get it a little just from that, what that excitement under Happy’s nerves could mean in the context of the only day on a plane that would have meant something to both of them. But maybe it was just wishful thinking, just like he’d have pushed away any suspicions he did feel as. “What didn’t you know?”

Again Happy’s mouth twisted around words that just didn’t seem to want to come out, like he had no idea how to say whatever his news was. Finally he sighed heavily and gestured at the car behind him. “Just… get in, Peter. Trust me, you’ll figure it out.”

“You know,” Peter joked as he opened the door, trying to set him at ease, “if any of my neighbors look out and see me getting into a big fancy car with an older man I’m totally gonna need to deal with a million Sugar Daddy rumors.”

“Wow,” a long-missed, dearly-loved, voice said from inside the car. “If that’s all it takes I would _hate_ to hear the rumors that must have swirled about me.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Happy said fondly, joy laced through every word, from outside while Peter crouched, frozen, halfway into climbing into the car, terrified of turning his head and seeing anything other than what it seemed so impossibly likely had to be there. “Otherwise at some point you’d have tried to avoid causing them.”

* * *

Later Peter wished he could say that he reacted in a way that could have been called cool, or even just called holding it together, in any conceivable way. He couldn’t move until Mr. Stark reached out (with his left arm, Peter remembered later, even though it meant twisting his whole body instead of just reaching straight out) and pulled him into the car. When he finally actually set eyes on him, a few more lines in his face and his hair gone more obviously salt-and-pepper than Peter remembered from the way-too-short amount of time he’d seen him after coming back from Thanos’ snap but still obviously, perfectly, him, all he could ever remember himself doing afterward was making a noise like a wounded animal instead of managing any type of appropriately joyful greeting.

His only condolence was that he also still remembered how shell-shocked Mr. Stark had been to see him when he came back from being blipped, so at least they were even on that regard. Though he was pretty sure he stayed out of it longer than Mr. Stark had before collecting himself. Pretty sure. Time seemed to go a little funny in his head for a while there.

He only started coming back to himself when he heard Mr. Stark call the miracle that allowed him to be sitting there in front of Peter ‘Project Lazarus’ and numbly responded, “I guess if anyone has the right to claim they’re better than Commander Shepard it’s you, Sir.”

Mr. Stark gave him the look he sometimes had like Peter had just said something undecipherably young, and went on, “Not the name I would have gone with, but Pep liked it, and I was trying to crawl back into her good graces at the time, so we rolled with it. Seriously did _not_ expect it to work this well, those nanos were just supposed to be an emergency life support system in the suit, they weren’t supposed to keep me going for anywhere near as long as they did or do any real healing themselves. Definitely not as much damage as the scans they took after the gauntlet showed. But when Pep realized that somehow my heart was still barely beating even though I wasn’t breathing and figured out the cause she decided to lock me away and see if for once a Tony Stark Original going beyond it’s intended capabilities would work out in a good way instead of ending in everything going boom.”

“But… but _why_?” Peter stammered out. “Mr. Stark, I thought you were dead. _The world_ thought you were dead. If there was even… even a _chance_, why would she hide that?”

Mr. Stark sighed, and scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Pete, d’you know what one thing the world _didn’t_ need to hear after the whole Thanos mess was? That the man they thought saved them all was now a vegetable with no real expected chance of recovery. Pepper thought, and knew I’d agree, that it would be better to bury an empty coffin then and quietly put my corpse in the ground whenever the nanos gave up the ghost. If the impossible happened, hey, we all just got lots of experience with the dead coming back to life.” He leaned back in his seat, looking up towards the roof of the car, and added as a seeming stray thought (though Peter thought, after years of obsessing over every memory he had of Mr. Stark, that he knew him well enough to know that his apparently absent kindnesses were sometimes the most carefully thought out things he said, distance draped over them so they could easily be waved off if the reaction wasn’t whatever he wanted), “For what it’s worth, I would have put you on the list of people to tell if I’d realized it was a thing I needed to have. And that you’d be alive to tell it to. I think the only reason Pep didn’t was that she was worried you’d spend all your time moping around my body when you should be out having a life.”

That hit uncomfortably close to home, and he wondered how obvious he might have been about things he thought he’d managed to keep private if she, if _both of them_, had realized that he absolutely would have spent every second he could spare visiting. Instead of pressing into that he tried to brush Mr. Stark’s thoughts right past it again by asking, “And Happy?”

That earned him a laugh. “Even worse! Trust me, Kid, you’ve never seen Happy in full Head of Security mode. If he’d known what was up he would have been standing guard 24-7 and never even had time to make a move on Aunt Hotcheeks.” He grinned wickedly at the groan that wrenched out of Peter, and added, “Why, yes, I do know about that! Morgan made sure to give me the full rundown of what everyone she knows has been doing the last few years, and she had pictures of Uncle Happy’s pretty sometimes-girlfriend. Never would have guessed he had it in him.”

At the mention of Morgan Peter froze, his brow furrowing as a thought hit him. “Wait, you said Ms Potts knew all along? But she… that lawyer…” He trailed off, not sure that he had any right to even finish that thought. It wasn’t information that was his to share if nobody else had yet.

But Mr. Stark sighed again, face falling slightly but not into true misery like Peter would have expected. “Yes, Morgan showed me pictures of Mommy’s new fiance too. And also Pep introduced me to Matt later; not who I’d have picked out for her, but he is very… not me, which I can see the draw of. Look, Pete, I’m not kidding about how very almost certainly dead I was. You can’t expect her to stay faithful to a vegetable forever, especially when in the eyes of the world she’d already been a widow for years and everyone who cared about her were pushing her to start moving on. Pep knows me well enough to know that I’d have been one of them. It was only a couple months ago that I started looking much less corpsey than the last time you saw me, and by then, well… she’d done her moving. Far be it from me to be the jerk who guilts apart a happy couple because I can’t let go.”

“What changed?” Peter asked, than at Mr. Stark’s raised eyebrow hurriedly clarified, “Uh, not to the jerk thing! To make you start healing. It’s been so long, why would it only happen now?”

“Well…” he lifted his right hand and tapped the fingers together. Though nothing about the hand looked strange the action produced a dull thudding noise instead of the pat of skin against skin. “Somebody had the bright idea to hack by arm off.” Peter couldn’t even begin to imagine what the expression he felt his face twisting into at those words must have looked like, but it got a laugh in response which he didn’t really think felt appropriate with the topic at hand. “Now don’t look that horrified! It worked, right? All that time the reason the nanotech hadn’t been able to do more than take over for my vitals is because they couldn’t do anything about the damage done directly by the stones, and it was taking almost all of them to keep it from spreading. Once the worst of it was removed they were free to start doing a better job of getting to a point where I could heal normally.” He looked thoughtful and added, “I am taking it as personal win that my machines never decided on their own that eating my arm would be the best route to their goal and started slippery sloping from there. I think. Nobody’s actually been willing to tell me who made that call.”

Peter couldn’t resist reaching out to take that hand, rolling it over between his and squeezing. Looks-wise it almost perfectly mimicked flesh and blood, but between his hands he could feel how it was heavier and more solid than the real thing could have been. “All this time, and that was all it took?” he asked quietly. “Mr. Stark, if I’d known I’d have ripped it off right then when it happened.” Then he slapped both hands over his mouth, letting Tony’s fall, as he realized just how horrible that sounded.

“Well. That’s a very creepy-sweet sentiment, Pete, but even I’m not cocky enough to think my nanotech would have been able to deal with that level of blood-loss so probably for the best it was done by a surgeon.” He gave Peter a pat on the knee and added, “Okay, trust me, people have said _way_ worse to me than that they would have removed one of my limbs to save me from my own private bliping. You can relax there, Pumpkin Spice.” He plucked the hem of the burnt orange sweater Peter was wearing to explain his latest nickname.

“Okay, okay. Yeah, okay, as long as you don’t totally think I sound like a monster.” Peter slowly lowered his hands and looked down at where Mr. Stark’s hand was still on his leg, resting not like it was there with any sort of intention but like Mr. Stark was just comfortable enough with him not to think anything of leaving it where it lie. And he thought about all the things he’d planned—dreamed, really, ‘plan’ implied he’d thought they’d ever actually have a chance to happening—to say and do if he ever had a chance to see Mr. Stark again. Plans which had totally flown out the window in favor of being completely shell-shocked, and then caught up in the incredible story of his recovery. Slowly he said, “So… you and Ms Potts are getting divorced then?”

“I’m not really sure I have to if I’m legally dead.” He looked thoughtful for a moment and added, “I probably should look that up before she signs her next marriage certificate, maybe get the new guy to help me; it can be an incredibly uncomfortable bonding moment. I sure wouldn’t want to be the one who has to explain to Morgan what the news means when they call mommy a bigamist if we don’t do things right.”

“Okay, since that’s clear…” Peter took a deep breath and looked up to meet his eyes. “Mr. Stark, I’ve thought just about a billion times about all the things I wished I could do if I ever got to see you again for even a _minute_, and, uh, sorry if this makes you angry with me but I’m pretty sure I’d be angrier with myself if I _don’t_ do it and I kinda think you’ll forgive me faster than I’d forgive me.” And he toppled forward across the car seat to press their mouths together. He didn’t know if it was just wishful thinking that at the very last moment he thought he saw Mr. Stark leaning in towards him as well.

It was hardly a kiss that stories would be told about, light and soft as Peter tried not to push for more than Mr. Stark would be willing to give, Mr. Stark accepting it without going stiff beneath him but not pressing back into it either. Maybe just as careful as Peter was not to try to push too much, or maybe that was just more of that wishful thinking.

“Sorry,” he said quietly as he pulled away, but not far, hovering close in his space just in case all those thoughts weren’t so wishful. 

“No, Kid,” Mr. Stark shook his head and laughed again, just a small amazed puff of air, “Trust me, you’re not the only one to spend five years obsessing over what you’d do if the dead came back to life. Not that I fantasized about making out with a sixteen-year-old, but geeze, look at you all grown up. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t stay in the car when you walked up because I needed a minute to jam my eyes back into their sockets.”

“Mr. Stark, what does that mean?” Peter asked, hardly daring to hope.

He leaned back away from Peter, pressing the heels of both his palms to his forehead as he stared upwards. “First of all, we just established that I seriously need to figure out exactly what my current divorcee status is. And then you seriously think about the fact that I am a one-armed old man with a ten-year-old daughter who, okay, does already adore you judging by the catch-up stories she’s told me, which I do appreciate, but that is a big thing. And then…” He hissed a breath through his teeth, “See, it always used to be my policy that anyone in their twenties could decide for themselves what they want, but in this case I really feel like the responsible thing to do would be to say… therapy? For, I can’t even believe I’m saying this, both of us possibly, there’s this green-haired guy people keep recommending and I _do_ appreciate his spitting in the face of professional norms like that. Because in my mind you just came back from the dead a couple months ago, and in _yours_ I’ve only been up and walking for… have we reached an hour yet? Not really a point whether either of us can be very objective about the other.”

“And then?”

Slowly Mr. Stark let his eyes drift down to Peter’s again. “And then… Well, on the upside anybody who knows about you has already always thought that the way I treat you is completely inappropriate, so their view can’t sink that much further on the matter. I’m not saying _no_ here, Pete, just that if it’s gonna be yes it has to be a slow one. I’m not going to risk being the monster who dove into things you only thought you want because we’re both too traumatized by Thanos to make proper judgments.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Sir, I absolutely wanted the same thing before I’d ever even heard Thanos’ name.” And then, with a certainty that would have mortified his sixteen year old self if he’d felt it then, he added, “You _know_ I did. I know you do.” Because one of the many things he hadn’t known about Mr. Stark back then that he’d learned from hearing stories from Happy, and Rhodey, and even occasionally Ms Potts since then was that part of the reason the Tony Stark Playboy Years hadn’t been even worse than they were was that he’d had a nearly infallible sense of who would be open to his advances if he chose to make them. Peter really doubted his own interest had been subtle enough to slide under the radar, and was pretty sure the reaction to his kiss would have been a lot more freaked out if it had.

A pained look briefly flickered across Mr. Stark’s face. “See, you think that’s helping but it isn’t. Not really interested in being the monster who took advantage of a schoolboy crush either. Punk rock shrinks, then we’ll see what happens from there. In the meantime, try just calling me ‘Tony’ if you want to convince me I’m not taking advantage of leftover idealization. Or a nickname, in case you have failed to notice I am 100% down with nicknaming. Just stay away from ‘Sparky’, that’s what my old man used to go with when he was dealing with an investor who wanted to see someone fatherly.”

“Okay. I can do that. Tony.” Peter said slowly. It wasn’t like he’d never used the name before, but doing it directly to his face when they weren’t in the middle of everything falling apart around them would take a massive amount of getting used to. “So, before we do this taking things slow thing, which I am totally okay with, do you think I could have one _real_ kiss? Realer than just barely touching you. Tony.”

“You know, I kinda felt I was being an asshole to Happy when I decided to take a car with a privacy screen, but now I’m really glad I ran with that instinct,” Tony said, a non-answer that still told Peter exactly what he needed to know.

And this time when Peter leaned forward he could see for sure that Mr. Stark, that _Tony_, was leaning in to meet him halfway.

**Author's Note:**

> Left on the cutting room floor because the timing never felt right: Peter making a joke about Tony imitating Mr. Barnes and then rapidly backpeddling at the expression Tony makes. :-)


End file.
